


Comeback

by explosionshark



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, I'd argue that this could be read as Max's Boner For Every Girl instead of straight up shipping, Max is bi as hell, Pre-Relationship, ymmv
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-03-23
Packaged: 2018-03-19 05:48:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3598695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/explosionshark/pseuds/explosionshark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not all smooth sailing after Max's illustrious return, but she's ready to try harder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Comeback

**Author's Note:**

> I promised myself I would finish this thing before the second episode came out and I have. Barely. Titled after "Comeback" by Petal, an excellent addition to your emotional indie-rock LiS playlists. Big thanks to Thais and Steph for beta-ing.

She’s probably entitled to be annoyed when the first thing Chloe does after Max finally stops talking is excuse herself to go smoke. Here she is, literally on her knees after enduring the _freakiest_ , most _dramatic_ day of her life and spilling her guts out about all of it - and Chloe’s first reaction is basically ‘I’m not high enough for this.’

So, yeah; pretty goddamn annoying.

At least, it should be, but Max is having a hard time digging up her outrage.

It’s the first time she’s actually laid out the events of the day for anyone, _including_ herself. And when she’s finally said it all she’s just relieved and exhausted and she’s _glad_ to be alone for the fifteen minutes it takes Chloe to jog down the path to her truck and back.

Chloe’s panting a little when she finally crests the hill. Her throat and her cheeks are tinted bright pink when she drops onto her ass in the dirt instead of joining Max back on the bench. The only sounds are the distant crash of waves and the flick of Chloe’s lighter.

Max declines the hit Chloe offers her, angling her head away just slightly so she can watch Chloe smoking without being too obvious. She thought that finally coming clean would bring her closer to Chloe, but here they are after everything and it’s no different from where they were a few hours ago. Chloe stuck in her own head, smoking apparently just to deal with the stress of Max’s presence; Max caught in emotional limbo, waiting for her oldest friend to decide if she could bear to look at her.

“Well,” Chloe says at length. “Just… _fuck.”_

It’s pretty inarticulate, even by Chloe’s standards, but she really _means it_ and Max is laughing.

“Yeah,” she giggles, giddy and breathless because the world is absurd and horrifying and hilarious at once and if they weren’t laughing right now they’d probably be breaking down. “ _Fuck._ ”

“How does this shit,” Chloe begins, voice stupid and tight as she takes a deep hit. “Even happen to us?” she finishes, exhaling a puff of air and smoke.

_Us._

It’s the first time since she’s been back that Chloe has referred to them as an ‘us’. Max’s heart does a ridiculous little pitter-patter and she feels some of the tension leave her body for the first time since this nightmare started. Things get a little blurry and she realizes kind of dazedly that she’s crying.

Max turns her face toward the water, watches the sun dip further down into the horizon. She brushes the wetness from her eyes with the heel of her palm, swallows the ball of emotion sitting heavy in her throat.

It’s the first time since she’s been back in Arcadia Bay that she doesn’t feel like a stranger.

 

x.x.x.

 

Max and Chloe lingered on the cliff as long as they could. Up there, alone and together in a place that familiar, Max had been able to trick herself into not really thinking about what any of today had meant. The idea of going back to town made Max’s stomach do queasy flip-flops.

The cold and dark could only be endured for so long. Chloe had offered to grab the bolt cutters from her truck and let them into the lighthouse and prolong their stay (Max didn’t even want to _know_ why she had those) but Max decided that she wasn’t prepared to add breaking and entering to her list of misadventures for the day.

The drive back into town is quiet, except for the music filtering through the truck’s tinny speakers.

“You hungry?” Chloe asks, idling at a red light.

“I could eat.”

“Anyplace in particular?”

 _Two Whales,_ Max almost says. She hasn’t been back since she started at Blackwell, she hadn’t wanted to run into Joyce while she was avoiding Chloe. The wistfulness she’d felt by the lighthouse still lingers and she suddenly wants nothing more than to be immersed in all of the good things she’d left behind in Arcadia Bay, all the things she hadn’t allowed herself to miss before.

But for all the ways Max had fucked up, for all the ways Chloe is different now, for all the ways they’re not the friends they used to be Max knows that Chloe wants to be as far away from home as possible right now, and that means not dropping by her mom’s work because her friend had a _nostalgic whim_.

“You pick.”

They go to Carlito’s; Chloe orders them two burritos and a plate of guac and chips to share. She doesn’t protest when Max insists on paying, just offers her this tight, awkward little smile. They sit cross legged facing each other in Chloe’s truck bed with the food between them. Max laughs when Chloe tries to steal the guacamole off of all of her chips. Max dubs Chloe the Avacado Bandit and launches a counterattack.

“Shit, okay, truce - _truce,_ ” When Chloe smiles this wide, her eyes crinkle just a little and it’s William she sees peering down at her from a fringe of blue hair. She wants to tell Chloe so, but ‘you look just like your dead dad’ will probably kill whatever comfortable atmosphere they’ve managed to build.

They’re covered in broken chip pieces, Chloe’s got a bright green smear of guacamole high on her cheekbone. Max snatches the napkin she’s waving as a white flag and impulsively scrubs the the stain away before she can decide if that’s a weird thing to do or not.

“I think you mean ‘I surrender,” Max teases, leaning back.

“I graciously accept your surrender,” Chloe dips forward in a mock bow, eyes sparkling in that way that still says _‘I know I’m a little shit and I’m loving it.’_

“Ass,” Max rolls her eyes, gently shoving Chloe’s shoulder, not even bothering to cover up the laughter in her voice.

The tips of her fingers still feel white hot where they’d brushed Chloe’s face.

 

x.x.x

 

It’s a record _six hours_ of fairly successful social interaction before Max’s propensity towards self-sabotage kicks in.

“Do you think I’m crazy?” she asks.

Chloe looks a little startled by the question and Max can’t blame her. She’s surprised herself with it. It’s been on her mind all night, since Chloe’s relative non-reaction on the cliff earlier.

“I mean, not any more than I did before,” Chloe offers cracking a weak little smile. They’re in the Blackwell parking lot. Chloe has been sullen and pensive since they parked 20 minutes ago, content to let the radio once again fill the silence between them.

“Chloe, I’m serious.”

“I know, I...” Chloe trails off, heaving a deep sigh. She leans back against the seat, rolls her head away to stare out the window again. “I believe you.”

It’s what she wanted to hear, but suddenly getting what she wants makes it not enough.

“Do you believe that _I_ believe it or do you believe that it’s actually true?”

“I believe it’s true.”

“Really?” Max huffs incredulously. “Chloe, this feels like a bad science fiction movie.”

“Are you trying to convince me _not_ to believe you right now?” Chloe asks, finally shifting in her seat to meet Max’s eyes.

“I…”

Max feels her brow furrow with the realization that actually, yeah, she was kind of trying to make Chloe argue with her.

Telling Chloe made it real.

Having Chloe believe her made it _undeniably real._

“No,” Max sighs. God, Chloe’s always been way too good at cutting through her bullshit. That’s still annoying. “No, I… I’m really glad you do. Believe me.”

“Turning back time,” Chloe says, aiming for nonchalant, landing somewhere in the neighborhood of audibly haunted. “I mean, that’s… People dream about the kind of shit. Being able to go back, re-do things. Fix them.”

“Today has felt more like a nightmare,” Max says. It’s true, but in the face of Chloe’s disquiet it feels cheap and cliche.

“All of it?” Chloe asks, tapping her fingers restlessly against the gearshift.

“No,” Max hurries to reassure her, hating the fragile tone that crept into Chloe’s voice. “No.”

It’s like five years ago. Max feels lost, inadequate. She never knows what to do in the face of Chloe’s pain - back then, she panicked, she ran.

But she isn’t  going to do that, not again. Chloe deserves better.

“Can I stay here?” Chloe asks, suddenly. “Just…. just tonight.”

This is what they were waiting for, Max supposes. The reason both of them had been content to just sit silently in the school parking lot for nearly half an hour.

“I just… can’t deal with David right now, and-”

“Yeah,” Max cuts her off. Impulsively, Max places her hand over Chloe’s on the gearshift. She wouldn’t have thought twice about it when they were kids, but now it feels so forward. She’s not in Chloe’s head, not like she used to be, she’s terrified of doing something wrong, of fucking up all the progress they made today.

Chloe doesn’t pull her hand away so Max squeezes it, swipes her thumb reassuringly against Chloe’s. “Yeah, Chlo, that’s fine.”

 

x.x.x

 

It feels really bizarre to sneak Chloe into her dorm.

And it shouldn’t, right? Because this is a girl’s dorm anyway, and it’s just Chloe and she’s just here to crash for the night to get away from her step-douche but…

She’s only ever snuck one other person into the dorms. But Chloe under cover of darkness feels a lot more illicit than Warren in broad daylight.

Then again, Warren had been there to goof over movies with her on a Sunday afternoon and Chloe’s here to sleep with her.

Wait, shit.

Chloe’s here to be unconscious in the same room with Max until morning, as a matter of convenience.

“Yo, Space Cadet,” Chloe’s voice is a sharp whisper over her shoulder. “Maybe we shouldn’t hang out in your hallway?”

“Right, right,” Max winces, ducking her head to hide the flush creeping up her cheeks. “Yeah.”

She fishes the key to her dorm out of her pocket and lets them in.

“Sorry,” Max continues, shutting the door after Chloe. “I kinda zoned out there for a minute.”

But Chloe’s not paying attention to her any more, just standing stock still in the middle of her shoebox sized room, gaze locked on the wall above her bed.

The photowall is lit up by the string of lanterns she’d forgotten to turn off _(way to destroy the planet, Max)_ making the whole thing look unintentionally dramatic.

She’s honestly proud of the Max Caulfield Photo Memorial Wall. Like, _really proud_. It’s the biggest photo project she’s ever undertaken, started the summer before she left Seattle for Blackwell slated to last until graduation. Pride in her own work isn’t something Max usually embraces. Art for her is fraught with apprehension. Joy, too, and passion and ambition of course - photography is _everything_. It’s her sword and her shield - if she had to pick one thing about her life to define herself to the world at large it would be photography, absolutely.

And she knows she’s good. She doesn’t think she’s a strong enough person to put this much relentless effort into something she’s actually terrible at. She’s good, yeah, but she wants to be great and there’s still so far to go. That awareness is absolutely vital - no one’s craft was ever improved by complacency - but it also makes it hard to just sit back and look at her work and feel good about it.

The Photowall is different - she decided before she began that it wasn’t something she would ever publish or present to a larger audience. It was a passion project, something for her. Maybe that’s why she was able to relax about it, to let her guard down, because it wasn’t created with the end goal of public consumption and critical review. It was still meticulously curated and obsessed over, but the only person it was designed to please was Max herself and that was so goddamn _freeing._

She’d been proud enough to show it to Warren and Dana - flattered and grateful for their compliments, but ultimately unconcerned about their opinions.

But now Max is braced against her doorframe, heart pounding in her ears, feeling like Chloe’s next words could crumble her to dust and blow her away.

“Whoa,” Chloe breathes, clambering onto the bed  on her knees for a closer look. “Max, did you take all these?”

“Uhhh,” Max swallows. “Yep.”

Behold, _le artiste_.

“That’s so _fucking_ cool,” Chloe gushes, bouncing a little on the mattress. She reaches out a hand but stops just short of making contact with the wall.

“You can touch them,” Max says.

She takes advantage of Chloe’s distraction, puttering around the room to stealthily straighten things up. Chloe’s perusal isn’t entirely silent; she’s either aware of Max’s minibreakdown and she’s covering for her, or she’s totally oblivious and just being Chloe. Either way, Max is grateful for the stream of inane chatter that she supplies.

“Yo… Max,” Chloe’s voice is suddenly urgent. “ _Max._ Is that-”

Max whips around, trying to figure out why Chloe is suddenly-

“Oh god-”

_“-The Captain?”_

Chloe’s laughing (probably too loudly) and scooping the toy up in her arms. She collapses onto her back, kicking her legs into the air. “Wow.”

Max wants to melt into the floor. This cannot be happening.

“I can’t believe you still have this guy. That’s-”

“-Stupid, I know,” Max cuts her off, feeling humiliation twisting her stomach into tight knots.

“What?” Chloe sits up, sobering a little. “Max, what are you talking about? This is cool.”

“An eighteen year old with a teddy bear is cool?” Max presses, annoyed and embarrassed.

“So you still have him, so what? It’s sweet.”

 _Sweet,_ Max realizes bitterly, is not what she wants Chloe to think of her.

Come to think of it, she’s not entirely sure _what_ she wants Chloe to think of her, but sweet is definitely not at the top of that list.

Rationally, she realizes she’s probably _way overreacting_ but she’s spent the entire day trying to behave _rationally_ as the world got more and more absurd around her and she’s fucking _tired of it._

Max dropped to the sofa, jamming her fingertips into her temples as if she could physically rub away her frustration.

“I don’t get why you’re being so fucking pissy about this,” Chloe snaps, irritation plain in her voice.

Of course Chloe doesn’t get it.

Even at their closest, there were always things Chloe didn’t get because she was beautiful and she was confident and she could open her mouth and say whatever she wanted without agonizing for weeks over how it was received. She couldn’t understand what it was like to always be the afterthought, an unremarkable shoot starved for sunlight in the shadow of something arresting and grand.

Leaving Arcadia Bay had been easier than Chloe could ever understand.

Moving to the city was scary, sure. And she’d felt guilty about leaving Chloe and nervous about being in a brand new place, but more than anything she’d been excited by the prospect.

And relieved.

Relieved not just to free herself from the bonds of Chloe’s need, but for the opportunity to start over. Arcadia Bay Max was set in stone, a product of her environment.

Seattle Max could be anyone.

At the time she had actually believed that, because thirteen year olds are idiots.

But the world doesn’t care if you want to be the kind of girl that gets invited to high school parties. Fate doesn’t give a shit if you’re insecure about your braces.

Metamorphosis is possible but it’s not elective and it doesn’t come without a price.

Because here’s Chloe, with the scars on her arms and her blue hair and the smoke in her lungs.Chloe who has weathered the horrors life had imposed upon her and been transformed in kind-

-into the kind of person who ends up getting shot and killed in a public bathroom.

Max winces, wishing she could scrub the memory from her mind, feeling suddenly petty and sick with herself.

Maybe she’s doomed to be nothing but herself forever - boring, stupid, average Max Caulfield - but there are worse things.

And it doesn't mean she can’t get better.

“I’m sorry,” she says finally.

Chloe doesn’t speak until Max looks up from the ground and meets her eyes.

“I wasn’t making fun of you,” is all she says. She’s still holding the bear, pulling him tight against her stomach, worrying a fuzzy ear between two fingers.

“I know, I just…”

She could go back, Max realizes dimly. She could go back and hide the bear. Or go back and react like a _normal fucking person_ when Chloe finds him. But as the thought occurs to her, she realizes she doesn’t want to. It would feel _wrong_ to do that to Chloe over something like this. It would feel dishonest.

“It’s been such a crazy fucking day, I think I was kind of due a meltdown,” Max says, hoping her light tone is convincing enough to diffuse some of the tension between them.

Chloe’s smile is cautious but forgiving, “Yeah, besides it’s late and you always did get a little cranky this far past your bedtime.”

It stings a little, but she figures she deserves it.

“Some things never change,” Max says.

And some things definitely do.

After everything that’s happened today, Max’s head is swimming with the concept of cause and effect and no matter how much she wants to downplay her influence, she knows in her gut that abandoning Chloe when she needed her the most had definitely helped set her on the path that carried her to bleeding out on the girls’ room floor at Blackwell.

Five years ago, Chloe had been standing on the edge of the rest of her life and Max had kicked her over the side.

It’s too late to apologize to Chloe now, at least in any meaningful way. Words wouldn’t cut it this time, and they never were Max’s strong suit anyway.

Her penance will have to come in other forms. Saving Chloe’s life was probably a pretty good start, as far as these things go.

Still, there’s a long way to go. No time like the present.

“We should probably get some rest,” Max says around a well-timed yawn.

“Yeah,” Chloe agrees, hauling herself up from the bed. “Got anything I can change into?”

“Closet,” Max points.

Max trots to the bed and begins to unmake it for them to sleep when Chloe’s voice grab’s her attention again.

“Whoa, Max, you play guitar?” She grips her tanktop by the hem and whips it over her head in one motion. “That’s so cool,” she continues casually, like she isn’t stripping in the middle of Max’s dorm room.

“Uhhh,” Max’s replies eloquently. There’s a tattoo on Chloe’s lower back, a few inches to the right of her spine. It looks like a flower, but it’s hard to tell from this far off. Max feels heat burst in her cheeks and up the back of her neck.

“I started learning a few years ago, when I moved to Seattle,” Max tries again a beat too late.

The mention of Seattle brings a bit of tension back to Chloe’s frame, but only for a moment. “Oh, man, were you in a grunge band?” She laughs, bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet. Chloe reaches behind herself, undoes her bra with one hand and tosses it carelessly over Max’s couch. Max’s gaze darts between the bra decorating her couch (black with blue stars) and the bare expanse of Chloe’s back. “Am I gonna find a bunch of flannel in here?”

“No,” Max drags her gaze to the ceiling, feeling weird for staring. “No, I wasn’t in any bands, it’s just something - I just, uh, like to play sometimes. Like, for myself. It’s kind of relaxing.”

Then comes the sound of Chloe fumbling with her belt and the jangly thump of her jeans hitting the floor and Max’s eyes dart back before she can stop herself.

She catches a glimpse of Chloe in just her underwear (hiphuggers, they don’t match the bra, neon green, black trim) shimmying into a pair of Max’ oversized sweats and forces herself to look away again.

“You should play something for me sometime.”

“Yeah, for sure.”

God, this is fucked up. Getting turned on by your best- by your ex-best friend while she changes in your room. Right now? Right _here?_ After all the shit that had gone down today?

Max feels angry at herself and ashamed. She doesn’t have a right to those feelings. Even if this wasn’t the first time she’d seen her in five years it was wrong. Chloe’s been through so much. She’s pretty clearly devastated by the disappearance of her… friend? Girlfriend? Max isn’t sure exactly _what_ Rachel Amber had been to Chloe, but in the end it doesn’t really matter. What Chloe needs now is a friend, not some hormonal perv.

“Okay, all set,” Chloe declares. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Max shrugs, still not quite able to look at her directly.

“All yours,” Chloe nods toward the closet.

Max wonders if she could get away with taking her clothes to the bathroom to change. But, no, Chloe would think that was weird. It is weird. In the end, she changes as Chloe had, facing the closet door with her back turned to the rest of the room. She switches into a new pajama top before slipping her arms through the sleeves to take off her bra without being exposed. She has awful 7th grade gym flashbacks throughout.

Max is pretty sure she feels Chloe’s eyes on her as she changed. She forces herself not to look back to check. She’s not sure whether she wants to be right or not.

When Max turns around Chloe has dragged a blanket off of Max’s bed. She throws it around her shoulder and takes a few steps toward the couch, “I’ll crash over here.”

It’s a good idea.

It’s the _best_ idea, really, but Max is an idiot so she finds herself saying, “What? No, sleep with me.”

The double entendre was stupid and unintentional, but Max laughs at herself like a good sport. She expects to see Chloe’s goofy _‘you said something vaguely sexual and I’m a literal twelve-year-old’_ smirk but instead she’s looking down, tracing patterns in the carpet with one bare foot.

“Nah, I think I’ll… the couch is fine tonight.”

It stings.

She’s never really been rejected by Chloe before and her first reaction is, disappointingly enough, anger. When they were younger, Chloe had basically gone along with whatever Max wanted to do and despite all the time Max has spent today thinking about how things are different for them now this feels like an insult.

Part of her wants to argue with Chloe on principal, to push until she gets her way.

“Chloe, that’s ridiculous.”

But she’s tired of being an asshole.

“You take the bed, I’ll crash on the couch.”

“But-”

“C’mon, you know how pissed my mom would get if I was a bad host,” Max snatches the blanket from Chloe’s shoulder and gently pushes her toward the bed.

Max sets her laptop up on a chair next to the bed, picking one of Warren’s least horrifying titles to play in the background.

“You still like to have the TV on, right?” she checks, remembering the habit Chloe developed after William died.

“Yeah,” Chloe looks young and fragile with Max’s blankets pulled up to her neck. “Thanks, Max. Really.”

“No problem.”

The couch is uncomfortable as hell and the noise from the movie makes it hard to fall asleep, but Max doesn’t mind it so much.

She owes Chloe a few.


End file.
